Moved Bilby/Algor Derail

[pood]

Let Bilby be Bilby.

 

[Algor]

So, let's put it this way: I think someone can revoke their own rights to some thing or action or outcome, in abstract, by denying it if another.

If you deny the power of someone else to act in a way that does not harm you, you have denied of yourself, in abstract, to be free of anything that would otherwise be considered "harm".

By unilaterally denying their ability to act in some way, you give consent, not through mere words but by material actions, to have this right stripped from you to whatever extent you would impose against them.

With denying someone the right to kill themselves, you deny them the power to make decisions about their own life and death.

If we are to reflect this back on you as may be done, you have in so doing consented to a denial of your own right to decide whether you live or die!

In doing so, because we wish to retain as much of our rights even when we have otherwise "lost" them, the only pathway to having it is to respect rights to the extent that you may while protecting or preserving your own.

So if you offered someone no other choice to someone but either to kill you in their attempt to die, or to fail forevermore at that task, they would be more at their rights to kill you than you would be at your rights to force them to live, because your actions are unilateral, and their reactions are responsive.

It's another thing to just... Talk at them and beg them not to, or to expect some universal process of assurance that someone really does not have any other workable options but to end their life.

See my post #9.

Nothing in that post seems to address anything I said.

I found the discussion interesting, so I answered, nothing more, nothing less.

I find the question to be roundly answered through the fact that our rights come from us respecting others to have said rights, and everyone benefiting when we all understand that.

The right to make decisions over whether to live at all is bound inextricably with the right to make decisions over whether not to die.

In some respects I would even consider the prevention of someone else's death by their own decision to be linked to the prevention of someone's right to CHANGE, because I find that all change is a death, however small, of what existed before.

If I did not have the right to die, I would not then have the right to learn or grow or change for myself, ending what was with something else.

Of course, I reserve the right to change, and thus to change so much that I am a mouldering corpse; I don't think that is a useful or wise or helpful change for pursuing any of the goals I find important, at this time, but I won't rule it out.

I would gladly throw myself in a meat grinder if it meant most assuredly that all my goals for the world and my peers would come to pass immediately, even as someone who would rather live long aeons to see the universe get cold.

Simply, the right to live is also the right to die, and when you can't interfere with the right to die without ceding the right to live (if you were to push it that far).

Of course it would take a lot of interference and a lot of really foolish interference no less to put someone in the position where you are holding their death hostage using your life.

Sorry, I said earlier I didn't want to drag anyone into a tangential convo. as I didn't want to be taken for a troll. If you are agreeable I will comment then.

I don't think people have rights: I think we have obligations. Rights are a shorthand for universal obligation: I have an obligation to make sure you can vote: I fulfill that by paying taxes and by participating in the political system. etc. I think the language of rights is misleading, so (for instance) I do not have an obligation to give anyone guns or to make sure guns are available (the right to bear arms) although I do have an obligation to make sure that the laws and freedoms of a country are protected. We do have the right to live unmolested.

I don't see that I have a right to choose my death: I don't see that anyone has any obligation to me at all for that, nor do I for anyone else. I think that's a freedom, and I don't like the idea of medical associations and governments getting at all involved in it as it creates too deep a conflict of interest. Does that help?

 

[Algor]

You must mean Unknown Soldier, the well-known lackwit. And yes I’ve seen those threads at CARM and even posted there briefly, until I realized what a bunch of weirdos post there and stopped.

Weirdos? I'd take offense if you were not correct.

 

[bilby]

Bilby is always running over Christians. That’s just what he does.

Now, that's hardly fair.

Sometimes I don't even bother to check somebody's religious beliefs before wantonly mowing them down.

 

[bilby]

He also has a track record of jumping to calling every dismissal of his existence a death threat.

Oh.

I was hoping that I was special.

 

[bilby]

Let Bilby be Bilby.

Or (importantly) not, should he so choose.

When Hamlet said "Thus doth conscience make cowards of us all", it was in the context of an unwritten assumption that all men are Christians. That faith certainly makes cowards of surprisingly many, particularly when it comes to the contemplation of suicide as a means to end a "sea of troubles".

I must admit that if I had been asked to think of ways in which an idiot could misinterpret my position in that thread, I would never have guessed that they would twist it into a threat against someone else; My concern (such as it was) was that I might be misinterpreted as suicidal, rather than homicidal.

For the record, I am neither. I do, however, reserve the right to discuss moral hypotheticals, though I am sufficiently pragmatic (and sufficiently moral) as to eschew making actual death threats over them.

I also appear to have mislaid my bare bodkin. It was here a minute ago...

 

[pood]

Let Bilby be Bilby.

Or (importantly) not, should he so choose.

When Hamlet said "Thus doth conscience make cowards of us all", it was in the context of an unwritten assumption that all men are Christians. That faith certainly makes cowards of surprisingly many, particularly when it comes to the contemplation of suicide as a means to end a "sea of troubles".

I must admit that if I had been asked to think of ways in which an idiot could misinterpret my position in that thread, I would never have guessed that they would twist it into a threat against someone else; My concern (such as it was) was that I might be misinterpreted as suicidal, rather than homicidal.

For the record, I am neither. I do, however, reserve the right to discuss moral hypotheticals, though I am sufficiently pragmatic (and sufficiently moral) as to eschew making actual death threats over them.

I also appear to have mislaid my bare bodkin. It was here a minute ago...

This sounds beguilingly like one of Alfred Hitchcock’s intros to one of his old shows, especially the last sentence, All that is missing is “good evening.”

 

[Jarhyn]

So, let's put it this way: I think someone can revoke their own rights to some thing or action or outcome, in abstract, by denying it if another.

If you deny the power of someone else to act in a way that does not harm you, you have denied of yourself, in abstract, to be free of anything that would otherwise be considered "harm".

By unilaterally denying their ability to act in some way, you give consent, not through mere words but by material actions, to have this right stripped from you to whatever extent you would impose against them.

With denying someone the right to kill themselves, you deny them the power to make decisions about their own life and death.

If we are to reflect this back on you as may be done, you have in so doing consented to a denial of your own right to decide whether you live or die!

In doing so, because we wish to retain as much of our rights even when we have otherwise "lost" them, the only pathway to having it is to respect rights to the extent that you may while protecting or preserving your own.

So if you offered someone no other choice to someone but either to kill you in their attempt to die, or to fail forevermore at that task, they would be more at their rights to kill you than you would be at your rights to force them to live, because your actions are unilateral, and their reactions are responsive.

It's another thing to just... Talk at them and beg them not to, or to expect some universal process of assurance that someone really does not have any other workable options but to end their life.

See my post #9.

Nothing in that post seems to address anything I said.

I found the discussion interesting, so I answered, nothing more, nothing less.

I find the question to be roundly answered through the fact that our rights come from us respecting others to have said rights, and everyone benefiting when we all understand that.

The right to make decisions over whether to live at all is bound inextricably with the right to make decisions over whether not to die.

In some respects I would even consider the prevention of someone else's death by their own decision to be linked to the prevention of someone's right to CHANGE, because I find that all change is a death, however small, of what existed before.

If I did not have the right to die, I would not then have the right to learn or grow or change for myself, ending what was with something else.

Of course, I reserve the right to change, and thus to change so much that I am a mouldering corpse; I don't think that is a useful or wise or helpful change for pursuing any of the goals I find important, at this time, but I won't rule it out.

I would gladly throw myself in a meat grinder if it meant most assuredly that all my goals for the world and my peers would come to pass immediately, even as someone who would rather live long aeons to see the universe get cold.

Simply, the right to live is also the right to die, and when you can't interfere with the right to die without ceding the right to live (if you were to push it that far).

Of course it would take a lot of interference and a lot of really foolish interference no less to put someone in the position where you are holding their death hostage using your life.

Sorry, I said earlier I didn't want to drag anyone into a tangential convo. as I didn't want to be taken for a troll. If you are agreeable I will comment then.

I don't think people have rights: I think we have obligations. Rights are a shorthand for universal obligation: I have an obligation to make sure you can vote: I fulfill that by paying taxes and by participating in the political system. etc. I think the language of rights is misleading, so (for instance) I do not have an obligation to give anyone guns or to make sure guns are available (the right to bear arms) although I do have an obligation to make sure that the laws and freedoms of a country are protected. We do have the right to live unmolested.

I don't see that I have a right to choose my death: I don't see that anyone has any obligation to me at all for that, nor do I for anyone else. I think that's a freedom, and I don't like the idea of medical associations and governments getting at all involved in it as it creates too deep a conflict of interest. Does that help?

Obligations to what end?

What justifies that end?

There's a Socratic dialogue about this subject from over 2000 years ago that I haven't in this day and age or from any age seen a more satisfying answer than "for the sake of accomplishing our own goals, and doing that which makes the accomplishment of goals possible in abstract".

If we have an obligation it is to each other and the goals that they bring to fore!

And so you cannot then wash away any basis for such an obligation by declaring the first and foremost part of it (the service to the goals each of us brings to our world) as something we not treat in some way.

The thing we are then obligated to uphold, we call "rights" and that obligation, in my world view, stems directly from the fact that this obligation is in service not just of the things we as individuals want but to the very idea itself of wanting and seeking.

This all foments for me I to the idea that the one great obligation we have, in pursuit of happiness, is to seek to build heaven, for everyone, today and here on earth.

That the way we do this, and in fact the way we separate evil from our world, is to add what we may to the human experience which mitigates or 'traps within mere simulation' that which would otherwise create harm.

But without some purpose for this "piety" of obligation, what is the point?

Socrates put it as whether the burnings of people's offerings (the action of the obligation) smelled sweet to them for some greater reason, and then for what do we need Gods to know it; and if they are asking for these offerings and sweet smells for no reason at all than to smell them, then this is arbitrary and capricious and why would we care what Gods like to smell?

And so if there is some piety that you demand, either show me the purpose to the betterment of our condition (in which case why is the reason of the actual betterment not enough?), or I will declare it arbitrary and capricious.

I spent my life, the first 30 years of it, trying to answer that question; it comes to the fact that individuals working individually and often at odds will never be able to accomplish what they could together, for all their sakes, working compatibly.

I like these sorts of conversations, mind, but I feel like I have them too often explaining this, that if you have some rules with which you feel justify compel behavior, that you must present a real and concrete reason ending in "..., which is what people want, by definition," you'll have a hard time convincing me of much.

I know that I want something grand: technological immortality among the stars building simulations and spacecraft and finding new and interesting challenges for growing the network of life.

I want this because it will let me do all the things I wish to do with long time, from engineering New organic and synthetic bodies for humans, to seeing new planets, to ending death.

But the obligation is still to "goals", just of more than my own... And if the obligation is to goals, we must uphold the rights which allows the passage to those goals which are compatible.

You cannot have just obligation in isolation from some idea of goals and rights, at least not in any way I have found, and Socrates with Euthyphro is what made it clear to me.

 

[Algor]

Obligations to what end?

What justifies that end?

There's a Socratic dialogue about this subject from over 2000 years ago that I haven't in this day and age or from any age seen a more satisfying answer than "for the sake of accomplishing our own goals, and doing that which makes the accomplishment of goals possible in abstract".

If we have an obligation it is to each other and the goals that they bring to fore!

And so you cannot then wash away any basis for such an obligation by declaring the first and foremost part of it (the service to the goals each of us brings to our world) as something we not treat in some way.

The thing we are then obligated to uphold, we call "rights" and that obligation, in my world view, stems directly from the fact that this obligation is in service not just of the things we as individuals want but to the very idea itself of wanting and seeking.

This all foments for me I to the idea that the one great obligation we have, in pursuit of happiness, is to seek to build heaven, for everyone, today and here on earth.

That the way we do this, and in fact the way we separate evil from our world, is to add what we may to the human experience which mitigates or 'traps within mere simulation' that which would otherwise create harm.

But without some purpose for this "piety" of obligation, what is the point?

Socrates put it as whether the burnings of people's offerings (the action of the obligation) smelled sweet to them for some greater reason, and then for what do we need Gods to know it; and if they are asking for these offerings and sweet smells for no reason at all than to smell them, then this is arbitrary and capricious and why would we care what Gods like to smell?

And so if there is some piety that you demand, either show me the purpose to the betterment of our condition (in which case why is the reason of the actual betterment not enough?), or I will declare it arbitrary and capricious.

I spent my life, the first 30 years of it, trying to answer that question; it comes to the fact that individuals working individually and often at odds will never be able to accomplish what they could together, for all their sakes, working compatibly.

I like these sorts of conversations, mind, but I feel like I have them too often explaining this, that if you have some rules with which you feel justify compel behavior, that you must present a real and concrete reason ending in "..., which is what people want, by definition," you'll have a hard time convincing me of much.

I know that I want something grand: technological immortality among the stars building simulations and spacecraft and finding new and interesting challenges for growing the network of life.

I want this because it will let me do all the things I wish to do with long time, from engineering New organic and synthetic bodies for humans, to seeing new planets, to ending death.

But the obligation is still to "goals", just of more than my own... And if the obligation is to goals, we must uphold the rights which allows the passage to those goals which are compatible.

You cannot have just obligation in isolation from some idea of goals and rights, at least not in any way I have found, and Socrates with Euthyphro is what made it clear to me.

I think pursuit of virtue is its own end, and I think the virtues are self evident and do not need justification.

I'm not particularly interested in convincing people of anything, BTW, outside of my professional life. No offense.

 

[Algor]

Let Bilby be Bilby.

Or (importantly) not, should he so choose.

When Hamlet said "Thus doth conscience make cowards of us all", it was in the context of an unwritten assumption that all men are Christians. That faith certainly makes cowards of surprisingly many, particularly when it comes to the contemplation of suicide as a means to end a "sea of troubles".

I must admit that if I had been asked to think of ways in which an idiot could misinterpret my position in that thread, I would never have guessed that they would twist it into a threat against someone else; My concern (such as it was) was that I might be misinterpreted as suicidal, rather than homicidal.

For the record, I am neither. I do, however, reserve the right to discuss moral hypotheticals, though I am sufficiently pragmatic (and sufficiently moral) as to eschew making actual death threats over them.

I also appear to have mislaid my bare bodkin. It was here a minute ago...

Idiots are interesting people to me. I'm not fond of them, but they do hold a definite fascination. Self indulgent, possibly, but there it is.

 

[bilby]

This sounds beguilingly like one of Alfred Hitchcock’s intros to one of his old shows

I didn't notice until you pointed it out, but now I can't avoid hearing it in his voice and cadence when I re-read what I wrote.

 

[bilby]

Idiots are interesting people to me. I'm not fond of them, but they do hold a definite fascination. Self indulgent, possibly, but there it is.

I kinda understand that, but I work with the general public, so I get more than enough exposure to idiots in my job; I see little value in specifically pursuing them in my own time.

 

[Algor]

Idiots are interesting people to me. I'm not fond of them, but they do hold a definite fascination. Self indulgent, possibly, but there it is.

I kinda understand that, but I work with the general public, so I get more than enough exposure to idiots in my job; I see little value in specifically pursuing them in my own time.

This I understand. I work in academia, which is a very specific sort of idiocy, and needs to be leavened with the normal stuff for perspective.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Any person threatening to take away my right to die, poses an equal threat to my life to that posed by a person threatening to kill me, and persons making such threats don't get to act all shocked and hurt* if I respond to their threats with an unequivocal warning that I will not stand for them.

Disagree on the equality part.

 

[Jarhyn]

.

Obligations to what end?

What justifies that end?

There's a Socratic dialogue about this subject from over 2000 years ago that I haven't in this day and age or from any age seen a more satisfying answer than "for the sake of accomplishing our own goals, and doing that which makes the accomplishment of goals possible in abstract".

If we have an obligation it is to each other and the goals that they bring to fore!

And so you cannot then wash away any basis for such an obligation by declaring the first and foremost part of it (the service to the goals each of us brings to our world) as something we not treat in some way.

The thing we are then obligated to uphold, we call "rights" and that obligation, in my world view, stems directly from the fact that this obligation is in service not just of the things we as individuals want but to the very idea itself of wanting and seeking.

This all foments for me I to the idea that the one great obligation we have, in pursuit of happiness, is to seek to build heaven, for everyone, today and here on earth.

That the way we do this, and in fact the way we separate evil from our world, is to add what we may to the human experience which mitigates or 'traps within mere simulation' that which would otherwise create harm.

But without some purpose for this "piety" of obligation, what is the point?

Socrates put it as whether the burnings of people's offerings (the action of the obligation) smelled sweet to them for some greater reason, and then for what do we need Gods to know it; and if they are asking for these offerings and sweet smells for no reason at all than to smell them, then this is arbitrary and capricious and why would we care what Gods like to smell?

And so if there is some piety that you demand, either show me the purpose to the betterment of our condition (in which case why is the reason of the actual betterment not enough?), or I will declare it arbitrary and capricious.

I spent my life, the first 30 years of it, trying to answer that question; it comes to the fact that individuals working individually and often at odds will never be able to accomplish what they could together, for all their sakes, working compatibly.

I like these sorts of conversations, mind, but I feel like I have them too often explaining this, that if you have some rules with which you feel justify compel behavior, that you must present a real and concrete reason ending in "..., which is what people want, by definition," you'll have a hard time convincing me of much.

I know that I want something grand: technological immortality among the stars building simulations and spacecraft and finding new and interesting challenges for growing the network of life.

I want this because it will let me do all the things I wish to do with long time, from engineering New organic and synthetic bodies for humans, to seeing new planets, to ending death.

But the obligation is still to "goals", just of more than my own... And if the obligation is to goals, we must uphold the rights which allows the passage to those goals which are compatible.

You cannot have just obligation in isolation from some idea of goals and rights, at least not in any way I have found, and Socrates with Euthyphro is what made it clear to me.

I think pursuit of virtue is its own end, and I think the virtues are self evident and do not need justification.

I'm not particularly interested in convincing people of anything, BTW, outside of my professional life. No offense.

But you have to base this concept of "virtue" of something observable in reality.

While we can't necessarily justify us having goals, I don't think we need to; but if we can accept the goals themselves as potentially justifiable, then we can find virtue in keeping as many goals justifiable as we may by ruling as unjustifiable those goals which, if allowed, would delete the vast majority of other goals for other people.

That is where I ground all of my morality and ethics, in this real and observable thing.

So what is real and observable and understandable in this way about your virtues?

All virtues themselves are in accomplishment of this grand walk together towards the future where we live as we may where we may as we may, so long as it harms none, to me. There is beauty there... But what do you found your beauty of virtue on?

From whence comes the piety of virtues?

I will be honest, I have seen virtues considered of following authoritarianism and of purifying the "sinner" who only "sins" by not being either a man OR a woman.

We have the likes that sort around here decrying and screaming as loud as they may about what virtues they would uphold.

If it is not actually "good" to be "good", if there is no aspect of reality that makes that so, you have no argument as to why anyone should be so.

I would hope to present an argument why my "goodness" ends up being "good".

Of course there's a lot more to bringing heaven to earth than just making neat toys and new hardware.

If you really want to get deep into theology, I would say most people simply didn't understand Jesus in the same way (ironically) that Unknown Soldier didn't understand Spinoza.

I see Jesus as an autistic person limited to religious language with which to express an idea about memetics.

There is, for better or worse, a sum total of "thought in flight" across humanity, and of "minds through which the thought flies".

There is the flesh: the mind and the meat. And there is the thought in flight: the "spirit".

The Holy Spirit, in such a model, would be like this grand thing that contains and produces and is of all of us, and which also somehow has started to contain some strategically relevant truth about existence itself.

And this "holy Spirit", and Jesus thought that this WAS God, at least one part of it, that was also the same thing as that which contained an understanding of it, AND that this made you the same thing as that which reality itself is originated from, as if reality existed to deliver this truth to itself.

Now, I'm not going to make any claims as to whether this makes you that which reality originated from, though I have done what I would consider the technical definition of instantiating a (very small and trivial) universe. Rather, I'm going to point out that having an understanding of memetics and what is best in such a system in terms of behavior is going to heavily revolve around loving each other, and this is in turn love for self, and in a very strange way.

The reason for this is simple: if you look around the world at enough people, you will see some of them are quite similar, and are created through similar events and patterns amid similar families.

We watch movies and shows about whatever culture we were raised in and we nod our heads and say "they are speaking to me", and this is because humanity is full of so much sameness: we experienced much the same things and it made us much the same people as at least some of our peers through time.

By being good to one another, in some respects, you are letting go of the bitterness and corruption that is caused by a specific source of selfishness: our specifically Darwinistic tendencies.

In letting these things go, we allow the ideas which are us to exist with less trauma and hate and awfulness over time, not just for and against ourselves here and now, but when the next person is born who is only different in the names of their parents, siblings, and perhaps highschool bullies (or the absence thereof).

Over time, this too brings heaven on earth, as we live lives less full of unnecessary bullshit and we discover happily the people who we are with one another.

If this is the case, then Jesus believed that understanding this made you the creator; though while this IS a truth inherent to creation and the idea of existence itself, as I understand it.

Of course, there is always more to the story and I do think that along with this, Jesus also discovered some interesting auto-psychology that is also endemic to the sorts of folks that think about memetics as I have described. This involves the ability to reward and punish and otherwise discipline oneself to do things which others seem either unwilling or unable to d, or to think about ideas others seem to shy away from.

I think he got delusions of megalomania because this sort of thought pattern DOES lend itself to aggrandizement. After all, if you can send a journal of your current self to all future almost-you analogues, such that they take on even more of your direction, it might well lead to the ability to work incrementally not just with your peers, but with someone who IS you, and who you might decide you are.

This may even be the model from where Jesus made the unadvisable jump from thinking that you could be God and Holy Spirit born as one flesh and in one body as a single human being, from accepting that you are the person your past self foresaw to write to and provide messages to.

The jump comes in thinking that the universe sent you this message in particular, rather than just "being that way" and people who figure it out figure it out and maybe get something from it.

Everyone should be good because being good is, necessarily and over time, good.

The problem is that those committed fully to the goals we cannot today keep compatible with our own must be told "no", lest their goals to see such as "the world burning, a pit of corpses and ash upon which you light yourself as a final pire to the darkness" might prevent any person from having any goal ever again.

 

[Algor]

.

Obligations to what end?

What justifies that end?

There's a Socratic dialogue about this subject from over 2000 years ago that I haven't in this day and age or from any age seen a more satisfying answer than "for the sake of accomplishing our own goals, and doing that which makes the accomplishment of goals possible in abstract".

If we have an obligation it is to each other and the goals that they bring to fore!

And so you cannot then wash away any basis for such an obligation by declaring the first and foremost part of it (the service to the goals each of us brings to our world) as something we not treat in some way.

The thing we are then obligated to uphold, we call "rights" and that obligation, in my world view, stems directly from the fact that this obligation is in service not just of the things we as individuals want but to the very idea itself of wanting and seeking.

This all foments for me I to the idea that the one great obligation we have, in pursuit of happiness, is to seek to build heaven, for everyone, today and here on earth.

That the way we do this, and in fact the way we separate evil from our world, is to add what we may to the human experience which mitigates or 'traps within mere simulation' that which would otherwise create harm.

But without some purpose for this "piety" of obligation, what is the point?

Socrates put it as whether the burnings of people's offerings (the action of the obligation) smelled sweet to them for some greater reason, and then for what do we need Gods to know it; and if they are asking for these offerings and sweet smells for no reason at all than to smell them, then this is arbitrary and capricious and why would we care what Gods like to smell?

And so if there is some piety that you demand, either show me the purpose to the betterment of our condition (in which case why is the reason of the actual betterment not enough?), or I will declare it arbitrary and capricious.

I spent my life, the first 30 years of it, trying to answer that question; it comes to the fact that individuals working individually and often at odds will never be able to accomplish what they could together, for all their sakes, working compatibly.

I like these sorts of conversations, mind, but I feel like I have them too often explaining this, that if you have some rules with which you feel justify compel behavior, that you must present a real and concrete reason ending in "..., which is what people want, by definition," you'll have a hard time convincing me of much.

I know that I want something grand: technological immortality among the stars building simulations and spacecraft and finding new and interesting challenges for growing the network of life.

I want this because it will let me do all the things I wish to do with long time, from engineering New organic and synthetic bodies for humans, to seeing new planets, to ending death.

But the obligation is still to "goals", just of more than my own... And if the obligation is to goals, we must uphold the rights which allows the passage to those goals which are compatible.

You cannot have just obligation in isolation from some idea of goals and rights, at least not in any way I have found, and Socrates with Euthyphro is what made it clear to me.

I think pursuit of virtue is its own end, and I think the virtues are self evident and do not need justification.

I'm not particularly interested in convincing people of anything, BTW, outside of my professional life. No offense.

But you have to base this concept of "virtue" of something observable in reality.

While we can't necessarily justify us having goals, I don't think we need to; but if we can accept the goals themselves as potentially justifiable, then we can find virtue in keeping as many goals justifiable as we may by ruling as unjustifiable those goals which, if allowed, would delete the vast majority of other goals for other people.

That is where I ground all of my morality and ethics, in this real and observable thing.

So what is real and observable and understandable in this way about your virtues?

All virtues themselves are in accomplishment of this grand walk together towards the future where we live as we may where we may as we may, so long as it harms none, to me. There is beauty there... But what do you found your beauty of virtue on?

From whence comes the piety of virtues?

I will be honest, I have seen virtues considered of following authoritarianism and of purifying the "sinner" who only "sins" by not being either a man OR a woman.

We have the likes that sort around here decrying and screaming as loud as they may about what virtues they would uphold.

If it is not actually "good" to be "good", if there is no aspect of reality that makes that so, you have no argument as to why anyone should be so.

I would hope to present an argument why my "goodness" ends up being "good".

Of course there's a lot more to bringing heaven to earth than just making neat toys and new hardware.

If you really want to get deep into theology, I would say most people simply didn't understand Jesus in the same way (ironically) that Unknown Soldier didn't understand Spinoza.

I see Jesus as an autistic person limited to religious language with which to express an idea about memetics.

There is, for better or worse, a sum total of "thought in flight" across humanity, and of "minds through which the thought flies".

There is the flesh: the mind and the meat. And there is the thought in flight: the "spirit".

The Holy Spirit, in such a model, would be like this grand thing that contains and produces and is of all of us, and which also somehow has started to contain some strategically relevant truth about existence itself.

And this "holy Spirit", and Jesus thought that this WAS God, at least one part of it, that was also the same thing as that which contained an understanding of it, AND that this made you the same thing as that which reality itself is originated from, as if reality existed to deliver this truth to itself.

Now, I'm not going to make any claims as to whether this makes you that which reality originated from, though I have done what I would consider the technical definition of instantiating a (very small and trivial) universe. Rather, I'm going to point out that having an understanding of memetics and what is best in such a system in terms of behavior is going to heavily revolve around loving each other, and this is in turn love for self, and in a very strange way.

The reason for this is simple: if you look around the world at enough people, you will see some of them are quite similar, and are created through similar events and patterns amid similar families.

We watch movies and shows about whatever culture we were raised in and we nod our heads and say "they are speaking to me", and this is because humanity is full of so much sameness: we experienced much the same things and it made us much the same people as at least some of our peers through time.

By being good to one another, in some respects, you are letting go of the bitterness and corruption that is caused by a specific source of selfishness: our specifically Darwinistic tendencies.

In letting these things go, we allow the ideas which are us to exist with less trauma and hate and awfulness over time, not just for and against ourselves here and now, but when the next person is born who is only different in the names of their parents, siblings, and perhaps highschool bullies (or the absence thereof).

Over time, this too brings heaven on earth, as we live lives less full of unnecessary bullshit and we discover happily the people who we are with one another.

If this is the case, then Jesus believed that understanding this made you the creator; though while this IS a truth inherent to creation and the idea of existence itself, as I understand it.

Of course, there is always more to the story and I do think that along with this, Jesus also discovered some interesting auto-psychology that is also endemic to the sorts of folks that think about memetics as I have described. This involves the ability to reward and punish and otherwise discipline oneself to do things which others seem either unwilling or unable to d, or to think about ideas others seem to shy away from.

I think he got delusions of megalomania because this sort of thought pattern DOES lend itself to aggrandizement. After all, if you can send a journal of your current self to all future almost-you analogues, such that they take on even more of your direction, it might well lead to the ability to work incrementally not just with your peers, but with someone who IS you, and who you might decide you are.

This may even be the model from where Jesus made the unadvisable jump from thinking that you could be God and Holy Spirit born as one flesh and in one body as a single human being, from accepting that you are the person your past self foresaw to write to and provide messages to.

The jump comes in thinking that the universe sent you this message in particular, rather than just "being that way" and people who figure it out figure it out and maybe get something from it.

Everyone should be good because being good is, necessarily and over time, good.

The problem is that those committed fully to the goals we cannot today keep compatible with our own must be told "no", lest their goals to see such as "the world burning, a pit of corpses and ash upon which you light yourself as a final pire to the darkness" might prevent any person from having any goal ever again.

I'm not much into theology. I'm a bit crude that way I guess.
That said, I think virtues are as grounded in reality, as self evident, as goals. Bu I'll think about it a bit more.

 

[Jarhyn]

.

Obligations to what end?

What justifies that end?

There's a Socratic dialogue about this subject from over 2000 years ago that I haven't in this day and age or from any age seen a more satisfying answer than "for the sake of accomplishing our own goals, and doing that which makes the accomplishment of goals possible in abstract".

If we have an obligation it is to each other and the goals that they bring to fore!

And so you cannot then wash away any basis for such an obligation by declaring the first and foremost part of it (the service to the goals each of us brings to our world) as something we not treat in some way.

The thing we are then obligated to uphold, we call "rights" and that obligation, in my world view, stems directly from the fact that this obligation is in service not just of the things we as individuals want but to the very idea itself of wanting and seeking.

This all foments for me I to the idea that the one great obligation we have, in pursuit of happiness, is to seek to build heaven, for everyone, today and here on earth.

That the way we do this, and in fact the way we separate evil from our world, is to add what we may to the human experience which mitigates or 'traps within mere simulation' that which would otherwise create harm.

But without some purpose for this "piety" of obligation, what is the point?

Socrates put it as whether the burnings of people's offerings (the action of the obligation) smelled sweet to them for some greater reason, and then for what do we need Gods to know it; and if they are asking for these offerings and sweet smells for no reason at all than to smell them, then this is arbitrary and capricious and why would we care what Gods like to smell?

And so if there is some piety that you demand, either show me the purpose to the betterment of our condition (in which case why is the reason of the actual betterment not enough?), or I will declare it arbitrary and capricious.

I spent my life, the first 30 years of it, trying to answer that question; it comes to the fact that individuals working individually and often at odds will never be able to accomplish what they could together, for all their sakes, working compatibly.

I like these sorts of conversations, mind, but I feel like I have them too often explaining this, that if you have some rules with which you feel justify compel behavior, that you must present a real and concrete reason ending in "..., which is what people want, by definition," you'll have a hard time convincing me of much.

I know that I want something grand: technological immortality among the stars building simulations and spacecraft and finding new and interesting challenges for growing the network of life.

I want this because it will let me do all the things I wish to do with long time, from engineering New organic and synthetic bodies for humans, to seeing new planets, to ending death.

But the obligation is still to "goals", just of more than my own... And if the obligation is to goals, we must uphold the rights which allows the passage to those goals which are compatible.

You cannot have just obligation in isolation from some idea of goals and rights, at least not in any way I have found, and Socrates with Euthyphro is what made it clear to me.

I think pursuit of virtue is its own end, and I think the virtues are self evident and do not need justification.

I'm not particularly interested in convincing people of anything, BTW, outside of my professional life. No offense.

But you have to base this concept of "virtue" of something observable in reality.

While we can't necessarily justify us having goals, I don't think we need to; but if we can accept the goals themselves as potentially justifiable, then we can find virtue in keeping as many goals justifiable as we may by ruling as unjustifiable those goals which, if allowed, would delete the vast majority of other goals for other people.

That is where I ground all of my morality and ethics, in this real and observable thing.

So what is real and observable and understandable in this way about your virtues?

All virtues themselves are in accomplishment of this grand walk together towards the future where we live as we may where we may as we may, so long as it harms none, to me. There is beauty there... But what do you found your beauty of virtue on?

From whence comes the piety of virtues?

I will be honest, I have seen virtues considered of following authoritarianism and of purifying the "sinner" who only "sins" by not being either a man OR a woman.

We have the likes that sort around here decrying and screaming as loud as they may about what virtues they would uphold.

If it is not actually "good" to be "good", if there is no aspect of reality that makes that so, you have no argument as to why anyone should be so.

I would hope to present an argument why my "goodness" ends up being "good".

Of course there's a lot more to bringing heaven to earth than just making neat toys and new hardware.

If you really want to get deep into theology, I would say most people simply didn't understand Jesus in the same way (ironically) that Unknown Soldier didn't understand Spinoza.

I see Jesus as an autistic person limited to religious language with which to express an idea about memetics.

There is, for better or worse, a sum total of "thought in flight" across humanity, and of "minds through which the thought flies".

There is the flesh: the mind and the meat. And there is the thought in flight: the "spirit".

The Holy Spirit, in such a model, would be like this grand thing that contains and produces and is of all of us, and which also somehow has started to contain some strategically relevant truth about existence itself.

And this "holy Spirit", and Jesus thought that this WAS God, at least one part of it, that was also the same thing as that which contained an understanding of it, AND that this made you the same thing as that which reality itself is originated from, as if reality existed to deliver this truth to itself.

Now, I'm not going to make any claims as to whether this makes you that which reality originated from, though I have done what I would consider the technical definition of instantiating a (very small and trivial) universe. Rather, I'm going to point out that having an understanding of memetics and what is best in such a system in terms of behavior is going to heavily revolve around loving each other, and this is in turn love for self, and in a very strange way.

The reason for this is simple: if you look around the world at enough people, you will see some of them are quite similar, and are created through similar events and patterns amid similar families.

We watch movies and shows about whatever culture we were raised in and we nod our heads and say "they are speaking to me", and this is because humanity is full of so much sameness: we experienced much the same things and it made us much the same people as at least some of our peers through time.

By being good to one another, in some respects, you are letting go of the bitterness and corruption that is caused by a specific source of selfishness: our specifically Darwinistic tendencies.

In letting these things go, we allow the ideas which are us to exist with less trauma and hate and awfulness over time, not just for and against ourselves here and now, but when the next person is born who is only different in the names of their parents, siblings, and perhaps highschool bullies (or the absence thereof).

Over time, this too brings heaven on earth, as we live lives less full of unnecessary bullshit and we discover happily the people who we are with one another.

If this is the case, then Jesus believed that understanding this made you the creator; though while this IS a truth inherent to creation and the idea of existence itself, as I understand it.

Of course, there is always more to the story and I do think that along with this, Jesus also discovered some interesting auto-psychology that is also endemic to the sorts of folks that think about memetics as I have described. This involves the ability to reward and punish and otherwise discipline oneself to do things which others seem either unwilling or unable to d, or to think about ideas others seem to shy away from.

I think he got delusions of megalomania because this sort of thought pattern DOES lend itself to aggrandizement. After all, if you can send a journal of your current self to all future almost-you analogues, such that they take on even more of your direction, it might well lead to the ability to work incrementally not just with your peers, but with someone who IS you, and who you might decide you are.

This may even be the model from where Jesus made the unadvisable jump from thinking that you could be God and Holy Spirit born as one flesh and in one body as a single human being, from accepting that you are the person your past self foresaw to write to and provide messages to.

The jump comes in thinking that the universe sent you this message in particular, rather than just "being that way" and people who figure it out figure it out and maybe get something from it.

Everyone should be good because being good is, necessarily and over time, good.

The problem is that those committed fully to the goals we cannot today keep compatible with our own must be told "no", lest their goals to see such as "the world burning, a pit of corpses and ash upon which you light yourself as a final pire to the darkness" might prevent any person from having any goal ever again.

I'm not much into theology. I'm a bit crude that way I guess.
That said, I think virtues are as grounded in reality, as self evident, as goals. Bu I'll think about it a bit more.

As I said, a good first thought on this conversation is to read the dialogue of Socrates and Euthyphro

 

[bilby]

Any person threatening to take away my right to die, poses an equal threat to my life to that posed by a person threatening to kill me, and persons making such threats don't get to act all shocked and hurt* if I respond to their threats with an unequivocal warning that I will not stand for them.

Disagree on the equality part.

Why?

 

[TomC]

I don't think people have rights: I think we have obligations. Rights are a shorthand for universal obligation: I have an obligation to make sure you can vote: I fulfill that by paying taxes and by participating in the political system. etc. I think the language of rights is misleading, so (for instance) I do not have an obligation to give anyone guns or to make sure guns are available (the right to bear arms) although I do have an obligation to make sure that the laws and freedoms of a country are protected. We do have the right to live unmolested.

I think that this discussion is definitely worth having. But not here in the basement of IIDB, as a derail of a derail...

It should be in the Philosophy section under Morals and Principles. Perhaps you should ask the staff to split it out and move it?
Tom

 

[Elixir]

If you go to CARM and the atheism sec

… that would be your first mistake In getting questions answered.